In 2019, our second son was born and our family was, to my mind, complete. Just two years later, my wife sought to persuade me that I did not know my mind. It only took her three more years to succeed. In 2024, our third child was born: another son. That was not what my wife had ordered, and Lionel Richie’s promise of ‘once, twice, three times a lady’ had turned out to be empty words.
I’ve seen too many teenage boys shrug their shoulders when asked what they intend to do when they leave school
In many cultures and countries, three sons would deem us truly blessed. But surveying the disaster zone of the playroom, we knew we were instead truly messed. A recurrent theme on Mumsnet is posts about ‘gender disappointment’. These are only ever lamentations from mothers who have learned from the sonographer that they are expecting a boy. This generally triggers unconvincingly insistent replies that boys aren’t that bad, actually.
It would be ludicrous to pretend that we are living through a Golden Age for boys. In my profession, the Bar, there has been a sea change over the last decade. The Lord Chief Justice is, for the first time in nearly 800 years, a lady; the Chair of the Bar Council is a woman, as are the Leaders of all but one of the Circuits. In my Chambers, all the current pupil barristers are women. Educationally and professionally, girls and women are surging ahead of boys and men.
As a father of boys, this provides serious food for thought. In every direction I look, there are accounts of boys and men behaving appallingly, spurred on by a surfeit of entitlement and a complete absence of virtuous purpose. The online world seems to offer nothing but the Manosphere and a toxic sense of grievance dressed up as masculinity. The devil makes work for idle hands, and men without direction or purpose are liable to head in completely the wrong direction with the worst kind of purpose.
There was once a time when any landed family with three sons knew exactly what their purpose was. The first got the estate, the army got the second and the third took Holy Orders. Almost nobody does this anymore because a mid-terrace in Walthamstow isn’t an estate, the entire army would now fit on Horse Guards Parade and you’d do well to find a church that isn’t being converted into flats.
It is a tradition the Royal Family has maintained to some extent. In its case, only the second son gets to see active service. Prince Harry recently observed in a speech to Nato that he felt he had lost part of his purpose and identity when hanging up his uniform. It’s a viewpoint that many observers might share. And you know when even the Royals can’t work out what to do with their sons that the rest of us are likely to be in a pickle too.
Something I’ve learned from fathering boys is that if you organise their energies, you get football and rugby; if you don’t, you get fighting and chaos. And while I have no desire to send any of them marching towards Vladimir Putin’s folly or signing up at the local seminary, I do think it’s my job at least to sketch out some sort of direction for them. It’s not popular parenting these days to say that children should be prodded or cajoled in a particular direction, but I’ve seen too many teenage boys shrug their shoulders when asked what they intend to do when they leave school. Leaving things to chance means leaving them with little chance.
One interesting question is what the 21st-century equivalent of the House, the Crown and the Cloth would be. A friend suggested a crypto investor, an influencer and a plumber. However, with the exception of plumbing, I don’t think I could countenance any of these occupations for my offspring. An alternative suggestion would be doctor, accountant and mechanic. I learned at university how important it is to make friends with a medic, and having a doctor in the house would certainly be useful for family wellbeing. Likewise, having an accountant under the roof always helps to keep the taxman at bay. Finding even the most minor repair to my car a complete ordeal means a mechanic wouldn’t go amiss either.
While all of those jobs would satisfy my needs, what they lack, perhaps with the exception of medicine, is an element of service. Teaching seems an obvious example. So too does working in the third sector. And while I would never foist a particular career on any of my sons, I think it is important that they are given some direction and impetus. It may be that they will rail against that direction, But it is often in life that we only discover the path that is to our liking when being guided towards one that is not. Just as long as they don’t follow in my footsteps. One barrister in the family is more than enough.
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